1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates generally to the public Internet and more particularly, to a method and business model for subsidizing Voice-over-IP calls by using interactive video advertisements through a third-party advertiser-broker.
2. Discussion of Prior Art
Advertising has been a popular marketing tool for corporations. While many forms of advertising and different ad-channels exist, video advertising on television has been far more the popular and effective method compared to post-mail/email or magazine advertising, as the audience is captive and attentive. Most recently, with the advent of Broadband Internet access, and web and streaming technologies, on-line web-based video advertising started getting significant momentum. Particularly, in-banner and in-stream type of video and image-based advertising are used on web pages while users search for content or purchase goods on the Internet. Although video advertisement is available on the web, it is not as effective as television advertisement since the audience is not “captive” (i.e., the viewer may simply skip watching the video by closing the video window and proceeding with the task in hand).
In parallel with these advents, the telecommunications services started to move from traditional switch-based telephony networks to public Internet where black-phones are replaced by soft-phones capable of sending and receiving real-time multimedia streams instead of just voice during a call. Operators like Skype and Vonage have gained significant customer base by offering Voice-over-IP (VoIP) services at low or no cost.
Because of intense competition, there is a constant pressure to lower the cost of voice calls. As a consequence, the operators suffer from significant ARPU drops as they try to compete fiercely on price. The overwhelming growth in Skype's business has been attributed, among others, to “free-calling” phenomena. The “free-calling” model can only survive if another Party subsidizes for the calls.
Advertising through telecommunication channels is a virgin area. It offers to companies a direct marketing possibility. Different than the common traditional advertisement channels (newspapers, TV, radio, billboards, etc), telecommunication channels provide the added benefits of direct marketing advantage as the end-user can be classified in terms of age, gender, level of income, location, etc.
Taking advantage of these two evolutions, sponsoring call through advertisement will definitely open a new and controlled channel for advertisements. With the edging technologies, it is now also possible to push video based commercials to the end-users just as in TV advertisements.